And I'll Sing You a Cowboy Lullaby
by on rooftops
Summary: They must have a good reason to be afraid of Lucy, a better reason than the fierceness of her glares and the intensity of her perfection. — Lucy/Lorcan


**a/n:** Ohmigoodness, I'm posting a one-shot this (a) less than 3,000 words and (b) not about Teddy/Lily.  
I hope I didn't decimate the lovely pairing that is Lucy/Lorcan, and if I did, feel free to tear me apart via reviews. Because really, I want to hear honest opinions on this one.

**disclaimer**: I own nothing. And the title is how James Taylor describes his song "Sweet Baby James" - just a bloody brilliant cowboy lullaby

_...your heart is harder than a diamond, sweetheart…_

Being a bitch when your entire life is sunshine and rainbows isn't easy, but Lucy Weasley has always been one to take on a challenge. She finds disaster in the littlest things – like when her hair won't fall dead straight to her waist and when her eye makeup smudges two hours after she's carefully applied it in the hazy bathroom mirror. She discovers enough problems to make herself believe that her life isn't perfect, and anyone who sees her striding out of Gryffindor common room with a scowl on her face and her mascara coated lashes hovering in a permanent glare would tell you that Lucy Weasley has a shitload of dark secrets. They say that she belongs in Slytherin, that if the basilisk were still alive she could probably hiss her way to his heart. Because, see, Lucy Weasley has evil in her veins.

Or that's what she'd like you to believe. Lorcan Scamander knows better.

He's been friends with the Potters for years, and being friends with Lily and Al and James means that he's become friendly with most of the younger Weasleys, and he's certain that all those "dark secrets" that Lucy's blue eyes and frosted lips hide are utter fabrications. If he asks her, he's sure she'll tell him that she just likes the way the scowl marks her gorgeous face, that she enjoys walking as if she owns the world, and that she loves the click of dagger-sharp stilettos on stone floors.

But Lorcan is afraid that if he speaks to her he'll find out that she is the embodiment of all the bad in both her parents. Which might be quite a lot of _bad_, all things considered. The small, sane part of his brain reminds him that the entire school (aside from Lil and Al and Molly) must have a good reason to be afraid of Lucy, a better reason than the fierceness of her glares and the intensity of her perfection. So the larger part of Lorcan's brain settles for disbelieving her evil from a distance, while the small part doubts this disbelief. And yeah, he's avoiding her because he is terrified of her, all right? But hell, if you could see the assassin-ready beauty in her eyes, you'd be petrified too.

"Really," Lysander says, while they watch Gryffindor decimate Ravenclaw in the last game of their sixth year, "There is something so _off_ about Lucy. Molly tells me that she thinks she's gotten even worse lately. I mean, if Molly's worried about her, it's got to be something serious, right?" Lucy had just spurted past the Ravenclaw chaser and she snatches the quaffle as it leaves the fingertips of their Keeper, dropping dangerously to avoid a perfectly aimed bludger. Lysander shakes his head, "It's like she's got a bloody death wish."

Lorcan snorts noncommittally, "She's just brave, Lys."

"No. No, there is a line between pure bravery and suicidal idiocy, and I'm certain she's past it."

"Why're you talking to me about this, again?" Lorcan feigns disinterest, tugging his cowboy hat low over his face and scratching at the long hair that curls on his neck.

"Oh, come on. You love mysteries. I'd wager you've got a stack of parchment full of little notes about Lucy."

"I do not. That would be creepy and stalkerish. I am neither creepy _nor _stalkerish." He manages to sound offended, but Lysander rolls his eyes and Lorcan can tell that his twin is about as convinced as skeptical Molly is about the existence of Crumple Horned Snorkaxes. "I _don't_, Lys."

"Fine, you've got it all in your head, then. You probably know what she ate for breakfast this morning."

"She doesn't eat on days that she's got Quidditch games," Lorcan responded without thinking, his eyes tracking Lucy's progress across the pitch.

"Ha, see? I told you."

"I still don't understand what you want me to do."

"Molly and I would like you to try and help her."

"You're joking."

"Not a bit, little brother." He ignores Lorcan's muttered, _By two minutes_, and continues, "Come on, you just need to start talking to her. That's all."

"You realize that the entire school is scared of her, yeah? I might get eviscerated if I even _try_ to say something to her."

"Oh, you'll be fine." And then Molly catches the snitch and Lysander and Lorcan stand to cheer for the team that they really ought not to be cheering for, but there is a redheaded girl for each of them on that team, and they'd much rather see those girls smile than any of their housemates.

It would be easy, Lorcan knows, to ignore his brother. He has become quite practiced in the art of ignoring Lysander over the years. But this is Lucy. And if Molly thinks that Lucy needs him, then he will sacrifice his skin, his sanity, his smile – whatever she requires to bring her back.

He approaches her after the game, comes up to her after she leaves the broom shed alone, her scowl back in place and her blue eyes frigid. "Hey, Luce. Good game." Because, well, what else was he going to say? "You really tore us apart."

She turns those eyes to him and he swears he can feel goose bumps rise across his skin as the air around him gels into ice. Lucy doesn't say a word, just lengthens her stride as she walks up to the castle.

"No, really. You played brill."

And then she whirls, her hands on her hips, her eyes narrowed, "What do you want, Lorcan?"

"I just wanted to congratulate you." He smiles into the ice swirling around him, "And the usual response is 'thank you'."

She rolls her eyes, "I do not need a lesson in manners from _you_."

"See, what you're doing there? That makes me think you do."

She snaps like an ice-coated twig in a silent morning, "Fine. Thank you, Scamander, for telling me what I already know."

He doesn't follow her this time, he just watches as she opens the doors to the castle and slams them behind her so the quiet grounds shatter into wooden thunder.

…_you'll taste like vivid starlight…_

The second time he speaks to her, they're leaving the Great Hall at the same time, and he can feel Molly and Lys watching him. He smiles, "So do you think McGonagall's gone round the bend? Did you hear about our homework assignment? Transform a tree into snow. I mean, isn't that all kinds of impossible?"

"Why do you wear that cowboy hat?" she asks, like the two are actually connected. "You do realize it makes you look like you're an American imbecile?"

He reaches up to touch the brim of his Stetson, a frown tensing his lips for the first time. "I think it's _stylish_. Very _in_, or whatever. Anyway, why do you care?"

"I don't. I just think you ought to." And then she's gone and he's lost his second opportunity to rescue Lucy.

"Maybe she doesn't need rescuing," he suggests to Lily, Molly and Lysander at dinner that night. "I mean, she seems pretty content with having everyone afraid of her. Maybe she just wants to keep it that way."

"Bullshit," Lily scowls around a mouthful of mashed potatoes, "No one would be happy if the whole world hated them." She considers this, "Look, even Voldemort expected to be revered."

"Are you comparing my sister to Voldemort, Lil?" Molly's eyes glow with threats, and Lily shakes her head quickly.

"Merlin, no. I'm just saying that Lorcan's theory is unfounded."

"Well, she's resisting me, anyway."

"Of course she is," Molly says, "She's used to people running away from her. She must be terrified of you, wondering why you're stalking her."

"I am not stalking her!" Lorcan stands, pushing back from the table and glaring at the three of them, "I wish you three would see that I'm doing you all a bloody difficult favor."

Molly sighs, "_We're_ doing you both a favor, silly boy."

Lorcan shakes his head, "I'll keep trying to help her, but I wish you lot would learn how to be…I don't know…considerate?"

"Never heard of such a word," Lily smiles into a forkful of pumpkin pie, "And I really think that you ought to focus on teaching Lucy, anyway. She's the one who looks like a cry for help."

Sometimes, Lorcan thinks as he leaves the Hall, talking to those three is more useless than talking to Lucy.

She's standing at the top of the staircase to the third floor, one of the ones with the vanishing step halfway down, and she's staring at a portrait on the wall as if she's trying to force her way in. "Luce?"

She glances over her shoulder at him and he smiles hesitantly. She doesn't smile back, but she doesn't run or glare or anything else, either, so he figures he's made some headway over the past few days.

"Hey, cowboy." Her voice falls somewhere between friendly and cruel, and he decides to focus on the friendly and forget the cruel.

"Hi, frigid bitch." She doesn't react, just raises a single red eyebrow at him and he wonders if she's heard worse.

"Aren't you supposed to be at dinner? Molly said she was meeting you and Lys. She invited me."

He shrugs, "I was tired, and I didn't really feel like listening to them all argue. Were you coming?"

She shakes her head, "No."

"Why not?"

And she grins at him, then, and he's shocked because without its permanent scowl that face is the face of his dreams, "Didn't feel like listening to them all argue."

"Want to come down to the kitchens with me? We can get some food from the house elves and avoid all arguments."

"Think we'll last that long without getting into one ourselves?" She asks, but she's already following him down the stairs, hopping easily over the vanishing step.

"We know when to shut up," he tells her, though really he's not so sure.

It lasts until they've eaten biscuits and pie and potatoes, and then Lucy's face turns serious and her laugh stills to a scowl and Lorcan realizes that the Lucy he's unlocked for a few hours has returned to her hiding place. He has to ask, because he really _doesn't_ know how to shut up, "Why do you do that?"

"Do what?" But her voice is seven degrees of chill and he knows he's already misspoken, already shaken this fragile friendship.

So he figures he may as well go all the way, shatter it entirely. If he has to do recon, might as well make it worth it, "Close yourself off, make everyone afraid of you. Why do you do it?"

She's completely gone. "Good luck getting back to Ravenclaw on your own, cowboy."

"Night, frigid bitch." Because, maybe candidness will be rewarded, someday.

…_you electric dancer, you fire weaver, you heart-weary lover…_

He sits beside her in Transfiguration and she doesn't say anything to him, although everyone else in the room, even McGonagall, stares at him in surprise before turning their attention to something, if not more interesting, then definitely more important.

He follows her to the Gryffindor Table for the few meals she takes in the Hall and Molly gives him a thumbs up and Lily cheers from beside her Slytherin friends.

He sits outside her classes during his free periods (and during those classes of his that he's not interested in) just so he can carry her books for her when hers are over – if she'll let him.

And he's ready to admit that he's acting a bit like a stalker, but now it's not about Molly and Lys and Lily asking him to do something, if it ever was. Now it's about bringing out that hidden Lucy, the one he knows exists, the one he's seen shining from behind titanium-tough shields of ice. He wants that Lucy, and if it takes stalking this other, fascinating, twisted Lucy, then he'll creep on her until she says _something_ to him.

But she's incredible at keeping her silence, and he stalks her for an entire week before she lets him take her books, following double potions, her last class on Friday. And then he follows her up to Gryffindor tower and thinks that maybe she'll invite him in, but instead she snatches her stack of textbooks from his hands and says, "Thanks, cowboy," and he knows he's dismissed.

But in all of his hanging around, waiting for the girl to talk to him, he's been making hypotheses. There's the theory that something really did happen to Lucy, something she doesn't want anyone to know about, something damaging in a profound way. But that doesn't have much credibility, since he's pretty sure that there would have been some sort of unavoidable sign, if that were the case.

Then there's the idea that she started it as an act, maybe to attract attention, maybe not, but she got in so deep that she won't even bother trying to break out of her icy persona. Or maybe she doesn't even know why she's become this way, but she has, and she's just as clueless as how to get out of it.

It's late, and that Friday has been one of those days where, even if everything had gone wonderfully, the gray sky and oppressive heat would have ruined it. Everyone is waiting on that drop of thunder and it comes suddenly, when Lorcan is on his way down to the kitchen. Rather than continuing to his appointment with the house elves and his stomach, he opens the door to the grounds and steps out into the surge of rain, staring up as it marks his face and pulls him further outside. He stops when he's surrounded by grass that shines silver in the torrents of water and he stares around him as lightning bites across the cloud-stricken night sky.

And there she is, her arms held out to her sides, her eyes closed, her body moving in time to her own personal rhythm. In the bursts of lightning he can see that her makeup is smeared across her face, that her hair is wavy, frizzy, that her feet are bare and mud climbs across her pale skin. She's an absolute mess, but he's never seen her more uninhibited, and she's oh, so magnificent.

She stops moving after a while and just stares up at the rain and Lorcan follows, his eyes squinting against the dazzling drip of lightning illuminated water.

Lucy turns to go back inside, but stops when she sees him, "Cowboy?"

"Hi, Luce."

"What're you doing out here?"

"Watching." You. The rain. The lightning. Beauty. It all goes understood and unsaid.

He holds out a hand she takes it. "It's because I wanted to be different than everyone else. I just didn't know how different I'd become until it was too late to stop myself. And sometimes it's fun, having everyone afraid of you." She pauses, "Although most of the time it sucks."

"I'm not afraid of you." And yeah, that's true, he realizes. He's really not.

"Well, I can't help it if you're crazy."

He smiles, "Do you want people to like you as yourself?"

"I'd really rather they like me as Babbitty Rabbitty."

"You could get people to stop being afraid of you. Just smile every once in a while. I like your smiles."

"And I like you," the words are out like the sudden rain – hanging in the air for a second before dropping into his heart.

"You don't act like it a lot of the time."

"But I do. Don't you believe me?"

The rain is still falling, lightly, and their lips are wet with cloud-water when she kisses him. She tastes of lightning fizzle and feels like electricity and yeah, he believes her.

"Will you tell me something?" She asks him as they walk back up to the castle, hand in hand.

"Maybe."

"Why do you wear that cowboy hat?"

"My dad gave it to me. He says it keeps the nargles out. But I just like the way it looks."

Lucy smiles, "I like it too." And he sees something honest there, something honest that he will work on until honesty shines from her eyes the way beauty glows from her soul.

And when Lucy Weasley starts wearing a dirty old Stetson around school and laughs at people's jokes and pulls Lorcan Scamander, _of all people_, into broom cupboards for quick snogs, anyone will tell you that that boy is a miracle worker. But Lucy says he's just a boy and Lorcan says she's just herself.

And that's really all you need, when your life is lightning bolts and cowboy hats.

**a/n:  
**I probably shouldn't be posting this. I'm pretty sure it sucks.  
But hey, whatever. If you hate/like/whatever, please review and let me know!


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